Dr. Changzhi Li Receives $400,000 NSF CAREER Award for His Work on Smart Radar Sensors

Dr. Changzhi Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has received
a $400,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science
Foundation for his proposal, "CAREER: Smart Radar Sensor for Pervasive Motion-Adaptive
Health Applications."

Using microwave Doppler radar phase modulation, scientists and healthcare providers
have developed new advances in tracking a patient's physiological motions, such as
respiration and heartbeat. When implemented, these advances can be monitored remotely
by healthcare providers without anything attached to a patient. This technology is
ideal for health monitoring over extended periods of time because it does not confine
or inhibit a patient and it does not cause discomfort or skin irritation (unlike other
devices, such electrodes and straps). Additionally, it may achieve what other devices
cannot through fast and remote identification of vital signs in patients. In this
way, the technology could be used in remote diagnosis, search and rescue of victims
after a natural disaster, or even remote monitoring and surveillance. Recent integration
of this technology with radiation oncology imaging processing by Li has offered a
very promising solution in tracking mobile tumors in lung cancer patient during radiotherapy.

While this technology predicts an attractive way to replace commonly prescribed chest-strap
or fingertip monitors, it has some critical limitations. Because physiological motion
is very weak compared to possible random body motion and sensor shaking, the noise
caused by random body motion may easily overwhelm the physiological signals that are
monitored through this technology. Although speed and frequency of physiological movements
can be detected, up to this point it has been difficult to reliably uncover the original
movement pattern — which has much more health and scientific importance than simply
the rates of respiration and heartbeat. Additionally, sufficient work has not been
done in the past to address the issues of integrating the system into a low-cost small
chip, package, or module, so that it can reach out to the daily routine of ordinary
people.

Li's group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas Tech aims to resolve these problems by using novel adaptive circuits and
sensor fusion. A 'smart' portable biomedical radar sensor will be devised for pervasive
motion-adaptive healthcare based on a hybrid of radar and camera solutions. Agile
RF/analog circuits and demodulation algorithms will be developed to realize software
configuration to sensor hardware. Furthermore, a CMOS radar-on-chip solution will
be conceived to demonstrate the feasibility of truly portable biomedical radar devices
that could be as easy to use as an iPhone.

If successful, this research can be directly used for the monitoring and treatment
of sleep apnea and sudden infant death syndrome. When configured as a nonlinear vibrometer,
the radar will also advance approaches to monitoring rotating and reciprocating machinery
in the transportation and manufacturing industries. Li's research will provide a thorough
understanding of the capability and limitations of continuous wave radar sensors for
short-range applications. The studies are at the crossroads of engineering and healthcare
disciplines, and will enable unique educational opportunities in engineering curriculum.

This project will benefit from collaboration with National Instruments on both research
and education.

A smart radar sensor can be used to remotely detect biomedical information.